


Sixteen Tons

by Samuel Blake (SpokenSoftly)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Family Issues, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV First Person, Self-Insert, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-28 00:02:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13891938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpokenSoftly/pseuds/Samuel%20Blake
Summary: I have a weird team, the world isn't quite the same as the manga, and I'm fucking blind. Let's see if I can make this work.





	Sixteen Tons

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo. This is something of a rewrite of my other "Sixteen Tons," done because Konoha is easier to write for and I can hopefully manage to not get lost in granularity like I normally do with fic planning. Some notes for this universe, which has some divergent characteristics from Naruto canon:
> 
> 1\. Dojutsu can occur via mutation, and do so in around half a percent of individuals with potential to become shinobi. These don't normally breed true, and are sometimes actively detrimental to the individual. The Sharingan and Byakugan are notable only in their relative lack of crapsack drawbacks.
> 
> 2\. Anyone can use, in theory, any two- or even three-element chakra nature. However, it requires precise mixture of chakra types in exact proportions, and is prohibitively difficult for people without dual-nature genes or a way to cheat around that.

“Yomahara-san, the doctor will see you now.”

 

I nodded and got up, navigating around a pair of kids roughhousing in the waiting area and stepping over a wooden practice-kunai they’d let go astray, making my way down the hall of the clinic to the room I’d spent the last day of every month having a checkup in for the last nine years. Along the way I avoided half a dozen orderlies, three nurses, and a speeding gurney. Not bad for a girl who was technically blind.

\------

“Ino Yamanaka will be allowed to sit the Genin Exam,” the Hokage said, setting the file aside. That left only one student in the class to consider for the qualifying Genin Exam, where the paperwork- and support-type shinobi would be weeded out and put into their apprenticeships and the future elite squads would be formed under their Jonin-sensei. “Last, Yume Yomahara”

He looked around, unsurprised when several of the teachers stifled groans. “The Leaf’s most incompetent prodigy” had something of a reputation in the Academy. Had she been less of an utterly hopeless case in several areas, she would have been nominated for early graduation several years ago. However, despite top of the class scores in Taijutsu and marksmanship, a record-setting speed for achieving a dual-element release, upper-middle-level scores in theory, and an admirable grasp of sealing techniques, the girl was years behind her peers in Ninjutsu and was to all appearances completely incapable of using Genjutsu despite a facility with detecting them that would make an Uchiha weep with envy. And, grumblings from some of the clans aside, genius in a particular category or categories was simply not enough to secure an early graduation exam when set against a lack of even basic skill in two core others. “I say let her participate, Hokage-sama,” came an unenthusiastic endorsement from Senke Kamarashi, the homeroom teacher for her group. “She’s good enough to pass, she can specialize later, and she’s in the upper third of the class. Better than the bowlcut kid who took the exam last year.”

There were general grumblings of assent to the effect that, while she could use some more remedial education (or possibly a replacement pair of eyes), Yume Yomahara would be allowed to sit the qualifying Genin Exam, if only because her eyes were a valuable asset. “Very well,” Sarutobi responded after the consensus arose, however unenthusiastically. “Yume Yomahara will be allowed to sit the Genin Exam. Now,” he added, setting her file aside and folding his hands, a few heads straightening slightly at the prospect of being finished, bless their naïve souls. “There are nineteen requests from clan parents and one hundred and four requests from non-clan parents for early admission to the Academy. We will consider these individually. Asako Aburame, age four…”

The Hokage opened the file among the chorus of exhausted groans. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but it was necessary.

\------

“Good afternoon, Oishi-san,” I said when my doctor entered the room. Late thirties, bald, heavyset, wearing a Chunin vest modified for his wider frame, Oishi Akimichi looked like a typical member of his clan if you ignored his eyes, blue from edge to edge and with bubblegum-pink crosses in place of irises or pupils. He maintained the village’s records of dojutsu lines, the forty-four active and seven hundred nineteen extinct mutations that allowed shinobi to do usually-unique things by looking really hard at things. Most of those, my Shirome included, were unique mutations that only one person ever had. “The usual questions to start?”

“Yes indeed, Yomahara-chan,” came the immediate reply, the doctor taking out his clipboard and marking a few things down while I spoke.

“No shifts in function, chakra consumption, or state of activation in the last month. I have successfully shrunk my blind spot by two-sevenths of an inch per ten feet. And thank you for the suggestion, the glasses worked excellently. It’s nice to be able to see at least somewhat normally, even if it’s for short periods.”

“Steady progress on the blind spot there,” Oishi-san said after a few moments, having nodded his acknowledgement of my thanks. “Assuming it doesn’t start leveling off you should be able to eliminate it within five years. Any progress on mitigating the other downsides?”

I shook my head. I could form chakra to use ninjutsu, but the physical mnemonic aid of hand seals was worthless to me with the perfect awareness I had of my own chakra flow. In time I could get to be at least competent in ninjutsu, possibly quite skilled even, but for now I was one step shy of hopeless. It had taken me an order of magnitude longer to learn even the basic three, never mind doing more than shaping chakra for other purposes. It wasn’t  _ awful _ , but two seconds to activate a Substitution in live combat would kill me ten times over.

It was actually  _ incredibly annoying, _ I’d always hoped in a situation like this that I’d reincarnate into a body with a natural talent with ninja wizardry as opposed to one whose redneck-Byakugan dojutsu rendered me developmentally retarded in that very area. B.R.O.B. was a dick like that. Still, at least I had seals.

“Still no progress on my moulding efficiency. I can shape very well, but jutsu that are more than just shaping are still difficult to execute. I’ve increased the granularity of my sensing ability, though,” I added, mentioning the one upside. Most things had a little bit of chakra in them, particularly if they’d been at any point interacted with by a shinobi, and my eyes were good enough to let me see that. “I’m hoping to push far enough to start seeing older chakra residues before long.”

“Yes yes,” he responded, looking up with a stern expression. “But remember, Yomahara-chan. Any headaches, any pain, you stop immediately.”

“Yes, Oishi-san,” I acknowledged, getting up from the chair and giving him a respectful bow, his admonishment the usual signal that our appointment was over. They’d been a great deal longer years ago, but with my eyes having reached a stable state where the only thing changing was my skill in utilizing them these visits were rarely more than going over a sort of maintenance checklist nowadays.

So.

I had the rest of the day free… what to do.

\------

Sealing was fun.

No, seriously.

Sealing was  _ fun. _ All those fics that depicted fuinjutsu got it… not quite wrong, but not quite right. It wasn’t a language, not really. It wasn’t anything like a code or art, and it wasn’t geometry, either, though there were aspects to it that worked somewhat like that. It was… a puzzle, almost. My eyes helped me immensely with it, the chakra imbued into the ink forming visible structures in the air around the seals when I concentrated on them. They’d been a fascination and a passion for me since I could properly hold a brush in this life. Like a four-dimensional Rubik’s cube, or a Sudoku puzzle if every square was instead a cube. Incredibly complex, sublimely logical. I’m lucky I had caretakers that reminded me to eat at least once a day, or else I probably would have ended up unhealthily thin for my frame.

I carefully pushed two fingers through the air, the normally vague appearance of a grey “shell” of visible skin surrounding bright blue chakra pathways having transitioned to flesh-pink as I coated them in chakra, nudging several lines minutely in a tag I was working on, the ink twisting and shifting on the page beneath my manipulations. I rarely had to do this kind of in-depth study nowadays, having spent most of my free time for several years puzzling apart the most common seals, but this was something I’d picked up from the Archives, an inert but undamaged Iwa explosive tag. The differences in their construction were fascinating, almost identical but with a different structure to the bits that corresponded to distance and… an extra section entirely, something that seemed to connect sideways into the air, fading into the background. Designed to fuel itself with nature chakra, maybe, or an elemental transformation. I’d have to try and puzzle that out later, and it’d be a bitch and a half if it utilized Fire Arts.

I poked at it for several hours, dissecting the geometry of the familiar bits in less than ten minutes, spending the rest of the time painstakingly examining the parts that differed from what I knew. By the time my caretakers called for me (not parents, retired Chunin acting as village-appointed caretakers, parents were temporary and ignorant and never understood) I’d spent a good chunk of the afternoon stuck on that fading bit. It had to connect to  _ something _ , it was a smooth fade into the background rather than a frayed end indicating damage, but I was hardly going to channel active chakra through a matrix that was part of an explosive tag. Nothing for it but to see if I could isolate it later. That would take a week or more, with my luck. “Yume Yomahara, if I have to drag you from that desk to eat then I will!”

I jerked at the yelling from directly outside my door and spent a few hurried moments poking the seal into a stable state before dropping the chakra sheathing around my fingers and dashing for the stairs, hopping over my backpack on the way. “Coming, Amaru-san!”

\------

Ahhhhh God… The test. Not the one that’ll determine whether I’m going back for an extra year or not, but the one that’ll determine whether I even become a  _ shinobi. _ Wizard assassin stuff would be amazing, but I fail today and I’m legally barred from using any techniques.

I sat down in my usual seat, back center desk in the classroom I’d spent the last six years listening to lectures in. Shit timing, though at least I got a few gap years between finishing my BA and starting military indoctrination. Even  _ if  _ four of those were spent learning a new language (and a great deal more easily than I would’ve managed in my last life, thank you infant neuroplasticity).

The first section of the test was written, a hundred questions on everything from history to crypto-analysis, with a few questions that didn’t have a ‘right’ answer so much as a ‘least-wrong’ one. Most of it needing exact quotes, since memorization was a  _ huge _ part of shinobi training, but that wouldn’t have been a problem for me even before I was reborn in a body with a quasi-photographic memory and the ability to cheat off literally the entire room. After all, information gathering was another shinobi skill. History questions from Hinata, cryptography from Sakura, ninjutsu theory from Shino (who had a surprisingly refined knowledge of chakra manipulation, mostly from the bugs), stealth and the miscellaneous questions off my own recognizances. I’d’ve cheated off Shikamaru or Naruto for the stealth bits but honestly Shikamaru was probably gonna go middle-of-the-road for results out of sheer laziness and Naruto was only good at  _ practical _ stealth, not answering theory about it.

I finished in the middle of the group, the early completers either being like Sakura with encyclopedic knowledge of the textbooks or like I would’ve done in my previous life, filling in the stuff I knew and taking a wild stab at the stuff I didn’t. Generally worked pretty well for me, I averaged Bs even in subjects I was fairly bad at, but most of the ones who did that here would probably fail the written portion. Not that it mattered much for Kiba Inuzuka, he’d easily get top marks in enough categories to pass even if he was in the bottom fifth of the class for written materials, but I was borderline in enough areas that I intended to take my time.

But… yeah, middle of the group. I walked up and handed in my exam packet once I was finished, getting a nod from Kamarashi-sensei, the woman looking over my test with remarkable speed and marking a few answers incorrect before looking up at me with sharp eyes. “You pass,” she said quietly, just as she’d said to several students before me. “Move out to the Taijutsu test, Juzaburou-sensei will be proctoring.”

“Yes, Kamarashi-sensei.”

\------

Taijutsu lessons were always bizarre. There was the two-thirds of the class that had no background in physical combat whatsoever, the clan kids who were trained in their own family styles, and the two or three kids that’d picked things up from shinobi relatives without any solid grounding. I was a mix of the three, solid background in self-defense from my last life, no real background in this life, but some training the last few years from the latest caretakers to look after me. My own style developed more in the direction of the Gentle Fist, not surprising given my eyes and relatively compact frame. I certainly wouldn’t be getting the leverage or force down that the Hard Fist version of the Konoha Basic style demanded, but the precision strikes of the Gentle Fist version of same were well within my reach.

That said, it wasn’t going to be easy facing off in a spar against Irobo Juzaburou with that technique. I would have preferred Mizuki-sensei, who wasn’t seven feet tall, wasn’t as wide as I was tall, and was an utter bastardly whoreson traitorous fuck whose tenketsu I would happily shred. But, alas, he was co-proctoring ninjutsu practicals, and there was no way for me to plausibly injure him with clones, transformation, or substitution. On a related note  _ yes, _ the Academy desensitization conditioning actually worked  _ extremely well  _ for me. “Alright,” the proctor said, his usual friendly frown-smile on his face (don’t ask me how that worked, his mouth somehow managed both) as he squared off against me. “Simple enough test. Demonstrate competency in five of the nine elementary stances of Konoha Basic, and a good reaction speed from them. I’ll be moving on you at graduation-approved minimum speed, so if you don’t react fast enough it’ll be marked down as a failure. All clear?”

I nodded and moved into the first Gentle stance of the style, palms facing one-third outward from my body, lined up appropriately. Benefit to my obsessive level of training, I was  _ good _ at Taijutsu. Easily the best girl in the class, and third-best overall behind Sasuke Uchiha and Choji Akimichi. Over the next ten minutes I thoroughly demonstrated this, showing well above competency in eight of the nine stances. I scratched by just above minimum for the last stance, but that was because it was designed for facing someone shorter than me, not twice my height, and the necessary modifications slipped my mind until I’d dodged several times. Still, walking away from the ring after that test, I was confident that it would make up for… what came next.

\------

_ Fuck _ throwing stars. Kunai? Sure. Thirty paces, twice Academy standard distance and still acceptable accuracy. Senbon? Thrice  _ that, _ and I could use them to deliver little packets of chakra for distance strikes against tenketsu if I had a bit of time set up and the right seals on the metal, though I played that one right close to the vest. But shuriken? Gods save me from edged fucking Frisbees. I would have been top of the class in marksmanship if not for the required shuriken test. Senbon was optional, and I aced it easy. Ten shots, ten bullseyes. Kunai, nine of ten. Shuriken?

I hit the target with eight of them. One of them hit the center.  _ One _ of them almost hit Kiba, thank fuck he’s good at dodging. “Well, that’s… good, as expected, with the same criticisms as the last lesson, Yomahara-chan,” Amaru-san sighed, waving me towards the other end of the training field. Hardly ideal to have one of my caretakers also be a proctor, but the Academy was short-staffed for whatever reason. Three sections down and passed. Halfway done, Now I just had my worst subjects to go. Next up, my personal least favorite: Kunoichi arts.

\------

_ Suzume Miyadera _

Suzume wasn’t a bad teacher, she knew that much. In fact, by most metrics she was quite talented. Her girls left the three-year Kunoichi training she provided with a workable knowledge of flower arranging, formal conversational customs from multiple countries and for multiple castes, comportment for same, and pole dancing. That last one wasn’t on the standard Academy curriculum, but the girls who took her optional class in that ended up more physically fit, which was never a bad thing, and were better prepared for the  _ inevitable _ fucking infiltration mission they’d have in a “gentlemen’s club” once they reached Chunin. She could take a dowdy civilian girl and turn her into a perfect, graceful flower given that the girl put the effort in.

But gods preserve her, there were some things not even  _ she _ could help with. The Yomahara girl was one such case. Acrobatic, competent at flower arranging and formal conversation, but not only could she not carry herself like a civilian no matter how she tried, she couldn’t even seem to manage “feminine.” It wasn’t the posture, though that didn’t help. It wasn’t her face either, though no amount of makeup would ever make her attractive. Not even her habitual use of masculine pronouns. It was just… something. Maybe the eye contact? The girl didn’t  _ quite _ manage it at the best of times, tended to focus a little low, on the nose usually if not on the neck. It brought across a more aggressive air.

Still, despite that, she was  _ just _ good enough with other aspects of the curriculum to scrape a pass. Hopefully she’d do better, or had done better, with other aspects of the exam, or else she’d be heading for a civilian career. “You pass, Yomahara-chan. Head to 104 for the penultimate phase of the exam.”

“Yes, Miyadera-sensei,” the girl said, bowing at the waist before moving swiftly towards the main building.

\------

Well that could’ve gone worse. I cocked up the comportment and tea ceremony, as usual, though evidently I did well enough on the rest to get a pass. And with luck I’d never have to deal with frufru feminine bullshit ever again (or at least not until I made Chunin). Fucking Kunoichi classes, like we were going to be expected to do something the men weren’t. I mean. We probably would, but. You know.

Shut up.

Genjutsu, at least, I was sort of decent at. Kagero Hyuga was the proctor, apparently the usual sensei was out for another medical exam. Average of one week out of the month spent in the doctor’s office even after years of therapy. Still, he was lucky enough to be alive after facing an S-class threat, so you can’t complain too much.

“I will change the environment around you in a variety of ways, you will pinpoint the changes as swiftly as you are able and distinguish which are genjutsu and which are ninjutsu. Your final score for this portion of the genjutsu practical will be dependent on both your speed and accuracy.”

I bowed at the waist, reaching into my jacket to take out a pair of large-lensed glasses and putting them on before clasping my hands behind my back, standing at parade rest, and nodding. The next two minutes were a rapid chain of changes, either warping in the environment that still showed as grey to my vision or sudden splashes of color accompanied by a disruption in my chakra coils. It was easy to recognize and no-sell a genjutsu when the manipulation people did naturally produced things that I would never normally see with my Shirome. “Two minutes four seconds, one hundred percent accuracy,” the proctor pronounced at the end of the series. “Excellent performance. You will now perform a basic genjutsu, utilizing at least two major senses. You will be graded on the speed with which you establish the genjutsu and the completeness of the illusion. Begin.”

My glasses, the ones Oishi-san had given me, were useful here. I fed chakra into them, doing a quick turn to take the room in even as I started molding chakra. Gods bless Oishi-san for suggesting chakra-sensitive glass as a way of perceiving the world normally, even if in this case it didn’t help much for my genjutsu since there was nothing in there to change in a way that wouldn’t be immediately obvious, just desks and chairs, and… oh. One second, two seconds, three…

There was a knock on the door. “Hold,” the proctor said, holding a hand up before walking towards the door and opening it, looking at Iruka-sensei for a moment before shutting the door in his face. “... Technically acceptable,” he said after a pause of several seconds. “I see that your normal sensei was somewhat exaggerating your incompetency in execution, though your image of Iruka Umino leaves much to be desired. The final portion of your exam will take place in room 114.”

I nodded, gave the proctor a formal bow of thanks, and left for the final exam room. With any luck, I’d manage to scrape a pass with what was by far my worst subject.

\------

Ninjutsu. A pox on the speed standards for Ninjutsu. I could be stressing so much less about this exam if I didn’t have to worry about failing because of my issues with chakra shaping. Two seconds was the upper acceptable limit to perform a jutsu once you’d started shaping, and sitting there waiting for the last of the passes to get in so we could start wasn’t helping my nerves. Unsurprisingly, only about a fifth of the class was actually  _ there, _ the rest having flunked out on previous sections or barely scraped passes enough that they’d been stopped at the door and told to leave. They’d get jobs in the civilian sector, likely, or they’d be brought into one of the clerical departments and given basic Genin training. The rest of us, as Ino walked in and the door was shut behind her, were the ones who were on track for Jonin Sensei. The full room consisted of the proctors, the future Teams Seven, Eight, and Ten, a few of the rescued Root kids, and myself. Odd girl out, and the nervous one. Naruto and Hinata were three rows in front of me, going over some last-minute chakra shaping exercises. I hadn’t expected  _ those two _ as a consequence of writing that letter to the Hokage, but her confidence was a good thing, she’d helped him with his control, and they were adorable together.

“Shino Aburame,” Iruka-sensei called from the front of the room, the Aburame heir stepping forward with his colony buzzing nervously inside him. Too quiet for anyone to hear, but obvious to my eyes. His Substitution was flawless, and while he made a Bug Clone instead of using the normal Clone Jutsu he still passed on that.

Choji, Sakura, Hinata, and Kiba all passed easily enough. Kiba was almost too slow on the Clone Jutsu, but made up for it with a dual-Transformation. Showoff.

Then came the first Root kid. “Taitsurou Karasuno,” a boy that in another life would have been called Sai, adopted by a Clan after Root fell several years ago. His ink-jutsu fit in well with their printing businesses, and the tiny titwillow that rode on his shoulder was a vicious partner in free sparring. He’d managed to be almost as much of a heartthrob as Sasuke, though “Taicchan” had actually flirted back a few times even if he’d never dated any of the girls. His Ink Clone and Substitution were executed almost flawlessly, though he could have done without flourishing his brush.

Shikamaru got through just fine, big surprise.

“Jiyuu Ookami,” the unofficial reason that Root no longer existed, was next up. He performed his Substitution and Transformation acceptably, but not excellently. Shin just wasn’t as good with ninjutsu as his boyfriend, it seemed.

Sasuke passed, as basically everyone expected he would. So did Naruto, to the surprise of basically nobody except Mizuki-sensei, who managed to conceal it. Naruto shouted something about finding Hinata as he ran out the door, probably ready to drag her off for celebratory ramen. With all of them gone, it was just me, Ino, her older cousin, and the proctors.

“Fuu Yamanaka,” Iruka-sensei called out. The orange-haired kid who stepped forward, another one of the Root foundlings, was two years older than the rest of the class and yet still sat with us. No idea why, maybe just a training level thing. He was given Substitution and Clone for his two tests. Then Ino followed him, Fuu waiting for her to finish her two Jutsu (Clone and Transformation) before following her out of the room. I stood up, running my fingers over the edge of my desk as I walked down the stairs to stand in front of Iruka-sensei and the traitorous fuck who would probably be stealing the Scroll himself by the time the night was over. I’d have to write another letter.

“Alright, Yomahara-chan,” Mizuki-sensei said with a smile that reached his eyes but not his chakra network. “We’ll need you to at least  _ make _ hand signs when you start manipulating your chakra, so we can properly time you. Understand?”

I nodded. “Yes, sensei.”

Iruka-sensei ran the tip of his pen down the clipboard until, presumably, he got to my name. Please not Transformation, please not Transformation, please not- “Transformation first,” he said, my jaw clenching convulsively as I bit back a curse, bringing my hands up into a tiger-seal and shaping my chakra as rapidly as I could manage. Internal muscle memory, go!

Just shy of two seconds after starting, I felt myself growing, the outside world concealed in a brief puff of white smoke as I grew into an acceptable copy of Amaru-san, reverting to normal in the same cloud. Iruka-sensei looked down at his clipboard for a moment and nodded. “Next, Substitution,” he instructed. I nodded, formed the worthless hand-seal one more time, and saw the world rapidly slide twelve feet forwards as my jutsu dragged me back to the little seal I’d left on my desk on the way down, the ink vanishing with the chakra used up before the cloud around my entry cleared. “Very good,” Iruka-sensei said with a smile, nodding towards the last of the headbands on the desk to his right. “You pass. Congratulations, Yomahara-chan.”

\------

I had walked into the Academy that morning a prospective Shinobi. Now I was walking out in the early afternoon a prospective Genin. Just one last thing to do before I could go get a celebratory curry.

“What’s your business here, Genin-san,” the Chunin at the base of the Hokage’s Tower asked me. I took a deep breath. Ten years, more or less, leading up to the next hour or two. I might end up dead because of this, though hopefully I’d have a chance to explain.

“I have urgent information on an enemy of the Village that must be delivered directly to the Hokage.”

The Chunin on either side of the gate visibly refocused on me, their eyes assessing. The one on the right, wearing the standard jacket and uniform with a hood attached that went over his head, nodded and motioned towards the stairs. “Hokage-sama’s office is at the top of the stairs immediately to your right, Genin-san,” he said. No real need for them to screen me, probably. Either I was telling the truth, in which case they would be wasting valuable time, or I was lying in which case I’d be put on a punishment detail for who knew how long. I bowed to him before hurrying through the door and up the stairs, uncomfortably aware of how fast my heart was starting to beat. Hello, nerves. Nice to experience you again.

\------

Hiruzen Sarutobi ran his eyes down another report. Hot Springs Country had put out a message about a new missing-nin, and Ishigakure had sent a request for shinobi to assist with an A-Ranked mission. He would have to start Shikaku on collecting information to update the Bingo Book with this “Hidan,” and maybe see if Kosuke was up for-

_ tap tap _

Hiruzen set aside the classified documents. The chakra outside wasn’t large enough to be a Chunin, but was far too well-developed to be a civilian. “Enter,” he called, hands folded on his desk. The door opened with a quiet creak, the blank-white eyes of the Leaf’s most incompetent prodigy staring at him as she stepped inside, closed the door, and bowed deeply. “<Your pardon for the intrusion, Lord Hokage,>” she said in a language that he had only ever seen written down, copied below three letters he’d received over the last ten years, the third coming with a small phrasebook. “<I am a Concerned Friend, and there is an issue that I wish to inform you of.>”

Hiruzen unfolded his hands and sat back in his chair, reaching for his pipe to light it. The person who had tipped him off about the last three major threats to infiltrate his Village was a newly-minted Genin, and would have written the first letter as a toddler. Or she was a tool of the one who was  _ really  _ writing those letters. Either way, he needed a smoke. “Explain.”


End file.
